Linked by Alley’s amiably humorous scenes of a small class, led by a Ms. Frizzle–like teacher, trooping through a reconstructed colonial village and sampling hands-on activities, Katz’s poems—some rhymed, some in free verse—open windows on daily life in those olden days. The young visitors reflectively comment on such diverse experiences as dipping candles and walking on cobblestones, playing familiar games (“Rolling hoops and flying kites, / Ice skating, bird-nesting, snowball fights”), sampling unfamiliar dishes (“Hush puppies, brown betty, flummery, crowdy, / Pocket soup, syllabub, apple pandowdy—”), mingling with the dancers at a powwow demonstration, and participating in a traditional Native corn-planting ritual. Sandwiched between maps of the Eastern seaboard that show both indigenous populations and early European settlements, pleasingly varied in tempo and tone, these 20 poems form a hard-to-resist invitation to “taste a spoonful of gooseberry fool, / Hundreds of years away from school.” (glossary) (Poetry. 7-10)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-689-84004-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
With an eye toward easy memorization, Katz gathers over 50 short poems from the likes of Emily Dickinson, Valerie Worth, Jack Prelutsky, and Lewis Carroll, to such anonymous gems as “The Burp”—“Pardon me for being rude. / It was not me, it was my food. / It got so lonely down below, / it just popped up to say hello.” Katz includes five of her own verses, and promotes an evident newcomer, Emily George, with four entries. Hafner surrounds every selection with fine-lined cartoons, mostly of animals and children engaged in play, reading, or other familiar activities. Amid the ranks of similar collections, this shiny-faced newcomer may not stand out—but neither will it drift to the bottom of the class. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-47172-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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